Reading Time: 2 Mins
The Signal
One by one the efficiency experts moved their way through the company and now here they were, in front of me and my entire division, talking about profits being down.
Rohit looked like he was going to barf. He just had a kid.
Sam put her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said. Rohit wasn’t so sure.
The experts flipped their charts, reading out our projected earnings like they were a death sentence.
Marina sobbed near the back and I felt the acid sting of new tears rising up in me as well.
“It’s been a slice,” Sam said, holding her box in the lift. I don’t think it’s hit her yet, not fully. Marina joined her.
I waved loosely at them both and turned to see Rohit with a box of his own. His face was long, sullen, sleepless.
“End of an era,” he said.
I called him a lift and he got in. We did not speak and let the “ding” echo and speak to the emptiness of the space for us.
I turned around. I was the only one left. The concrete floors were cold, prisonlike. I was still in charge, only now I was warden to none.
Seven stations on my section of the floor: all computers still up and running, all hard drives backing up the searches, all systems go, but only one set of eyes to keep track of anything that might happen.
It had been years since anything of any note had happened.
As much as I hated seeing everyone go, I can understand why the decision was made. Private funding had dried up and there was so much automation; did they really need all seven of us?
The days dragged. No-one to talk to, not in here and not up there.
My team at S.E.T.I. was my whole life for the better part of a decade and now I’m here on the East wing of the 8th floor alone, just trying to keep the lights on.
I miss the banter but I get to meet up with other departments twice a week. I’ll take what I can get.
It’s dark and our narrator has gone home.
In a corner, a monitor on a small stand sits disconnected from recorders. It has been silent since it was turned on seven years previous.
It beeps. A signal.
From up there.
Written daily using the #vss365 word prompts on twitter, compiled weekly into a story of exactly 400 words.
#division #sentence #slice #warden #go #take #stand
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